Symbiosis, 2009
Posterbox. Supported by: Mondriaan Foundation, Ámsterdam
By converting a poster box into a kind of huge Petri dish with controlled conditions, Van Abbema creates an environment for his prints to thrive. Over time, the micro-organisms begin to shape their own aesthetics and dimensions by growing over their printed boundaries. Slowly growing fungi are both devolving towards and evolving from nothingness. To symbolise this, two words grow inside the poster box: TODO and NADA . One is the other’s opposite, but yet they grow towards each other. TODO stands for everything, which is expressed by the fungi growing into empty space, eventually filling the entire sheet. NADA means nothing, which grows from the surrounding space into the empty characters.
